NaNoQriMo: Day 21

Rhodes and Selena were busy planning their wedding when Buckley and Stella returned from Pensacola. Selena was less than thrilled to see Stella, but since she had put her lust for Buckley behind her, she decided to turn over a new leaf and be nicer to the girl. She had liked her quite a lot before she’d realized that Stella and Buckley had once been lovers.

Stella and Buckley had a strange arrangement where she was staying on the couch at his place until she could find a job and a place of her own. When her parents had come up to Pensacola for her graduation, she had lied to them and told them that she’d found a job in Putnam County and that the training started the next week. She wanted to do anything to avoid going back down South with them. She wasn’t sure if she could write them off entirely, but she knew that she wanted to spend at least a little more time with Buckley. And at this point she felt like he was one of the only people she could trust.

After the incident with Brad, he managed to remain scarce. She didn’t see him again before she moved out. Stella wondered if this was shame or if there was something else at work? Buckley had not asked her any more who had violated her and she was not going to tell him for fear that he would kill the offender. The last place she wanted Buckley was in jail.

At Buckley’s trailer Stella was quite comfortable on the couch and while she hadn’t actually found a job yet, it wasn’t long before she set about looking for one. There were several elementary schools in the area and she applied at all of them. Lottie’s mother offered to let her rent out a room in their house should she get a job in Crescent City Stella was still unsure that she even wanted to be a teacher though, so she began looking into other jobs as well. She put in applications at several local restaurants to make some money in the meantime. She was not going to subsist soley off of Buckley’s kindness.

She soon gained employment as a waitress at Angel’s Diner on Highway 17 in Palatka. An old shiny diner, Angel’s was a throwback to an older, more classic period in Florida’s History. Opened in 1932, Angel’s was famous not only for it’s hamburgers, milkshakes, and onion rings, but for it’s pretty waitresses. Stella was now one of many.

She worked the night shift, which would work out well if she got a teaching job – she could keep both jobs. She wouldn’t ever have any time to herself but she wouldn’t be broke either. She enjoyed her work at the diner and it was through this job that she slowly began to acclimate to the way of life in Putnam County. It wasn’t long before people started to see her a little bit like a local and she started to blend in. This was an unusual feat for an outsider, but Stella was congenial and she wanted to belong her so she had very little trouble finding her place in the county.

She gave Buckley $100 a week for the privilege of sleeping on his couch, and although sometimes she wound up in his bed it was always fully clothed and never in any way a sexual thing. Sex was not something she had been interested in since the incident with Brad. It was sad, she had wanted Buckley sad badly for so long and now she was in a position to have him and she couldn’t find her desire. Brad had stolen that from her. But it wasn’t just Brad. In so many ways she had given her desire – not for Buckley, but for the act of love – to all the men she had wasted it on since Buckley when she was trying to forget about him. She was ashamed of the things she had done to try and forget his touch, but these things had seemed like good ideas at the time. These were the things that all the girls were doing. She thought she was a woman and this was what women did.

Looking back on her life and the way she had lived it, she wished that she had only ever been with Buckley. Sometimes, she would watch him sleep and think how foolish she had been to ever let him go in the first place.

But family is important, we are taught. Her family used to be important to her. Her mom had at one time been her best friend, and her dad had always been supportive and a confidant. They were good people. They were just from a different era. They were older – her mother was 37 when she was born and her dad was nearly 70 at the time. They were raised to think differently. Races are not supposed to mix, and that’s just the way things are. Never mind the fact that your only daughter is madly in love with this half breed you hate for reasons he can’t help.

The worst thing had been when they had made her give up her baby. They had been more than happy to help her sister raise her baby. Her white baby. But a baby with Indian blood? Forget about it. That baby had to go. It was a disgrace. It wasn’t even really about the baby. It was about the fact that they knew if she had kept the baby they would have been tied to Buckley forever and that was a fate they just couldn’t abide. She often wondered what her life would be life if she had been allowed to raise her little girl instead of sent to college to pursue a degree she didn’t care about. She imagined she would be happier as a single mother somehow. Her life as it was felt like a colossal lie.

Buckley enjoyed having Stella stay with him but the longer she was there the more he also wondered about the child they had together. He tried not to give the matter much thought as he knew that he was never going to see his daughter, but he couldn’t help feeling somewhat cheated. One night, after Stella had been there for several weeks he could no longer restrain himself.

“Did you get to hold her?” he asked Stella quietly as he was washing the dished.

Stella’s eyes grew wide as the realization of what he was talking about dawned on her. “They let me hold her for a little while, yes.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was small. It was really hard to tell because babies are just kind of like these pink blobs in a way, but she had a head full of black hair, and she had your nose.”

“How do you know she had my nose?”

“Oh, Buckley, she looked just like you. I could tell she had your nose even in the ultrasounds. She was perfect and beautiful.”

Buckley looked sad. “I wish I could have seen her.”

“I know.”
            “If you really wanted to give her up I would have let you.”

“I didn’t want to give her up, Buckley. It wasn’t my choice. I wasn’t in control.”

“Why do you let them run all over you, Stella.”

Stella thought about Buckley’s question. She had been wondering the same thing. She loved her family – at least she loved the idea of her family. She so badly wanted them to be proud of her, but there had come the point in her life where they had to stop trying to control her and let her make her own choices. If they truly loved her, they would love her no matter what she chose to do with her life. Their love always seemed to be conditional.

“If you go to school.”

“If you get the right job.”

“If you marry the right kind of man.”

She was tired of living up to their conditions. She wanted to live and die by her own standards. She was not a bad person and she was not making terribly bad choices. They were just different from the choices her family would make.

But she was afraid. Being cut off from the only family you have ever known is a frightening prospect and one that did not immediately appeal to her. Hence her little deception. She could be free of them while she stayed in Putnam County with Buckley and figured things out.

She wondered if they were serious sometimes. Would they really disown her if she were to make a life with Buckley? They hadn’t disowned her sister when she got pregnant at 15. But that was slightly less shameful.

The whole thing was just so frustrating.

            Buckley walked over from the sink and sat on the couch with Stella. “Do you have any pictures of her?” It was clear that he was really broken up about this. Stella felt terrible to have hurt him so badly yet again. Maybe she didn’t need to be with him anyway. All she did was hurt him.

            “No, I’m sorry. I don’t.”

            Buckley leaned over and kissed her cheek.

            “What was that for?”

            “I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yes. I would take you back in a second if you would have me. I love you, Stella,”

            Stella leaned into his arms on the couch. “I love you too, Buckley.”

            “Why does it feel like we’re already back together?”

            “Maybe we’re on our way.” She said smiling.

            “Take all the time you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

            And it was true, he wasn’t going anywhere, except to Cypress Estates every day to look for the elusive gator which was once again in hiding. It was as if the thing knew that Buckley was back on the property because just as soon as he returned with Stella, the gator disappeared once more.

            Buckley had begun to realize that to dispose of the thing he was going to have to hunt it down. He and Leland discussed this one morning over breakfast at Angel’s.

            “What do you mean you’re going to have to hunt it down?”

            “I mean I’m going to have to go looking for it in the swamp.”

            “Boy, that’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

            “Look, I’m tired of messing around with this gator.”

            “Me neither, but we ain’t talking about catfish noodling. We’re talking about a 14 foot gator that has shown itself to be ornery and aggressive, not to mention smart.”

            “Look, it’s not going to come out if it knows I’m around and I can’t risk someone else getting killed. We gotta go after it. Maybe we get some dynamite.”

            “Jesus Christ! Now he’s talking about dynamite!”

            “You got a better idea?”
            Much to his chagrin, Leland did not have a better idea, so the next morning the two men set out in the air boat with shotguns and dynamite to kill the gator once and for all. Rhodes wished them the best of luck and then got off the property for the day to avoid any liability.

            When they got to the swampland they turned off the fan to the air boat and let it glide through the water as the looked and listened for any sign of the gator. With nothing showing, they lit one of the sticks of dynamite and dropped it into the water. It soon exploded sending water, silt, and fish flying into the air. Buckley prayed that the fish and wildlife officers were nowhere near as this method of fishing was highly illegal. He wasn’t fishing though. He was after a dangerous gator.

            Not long after the dynamite blast, the gator immerged from edges of the banks, swimming quickly toward the boat. Buckley wondered why the things wasn’t dead, but he didn’t have time to wonder for long as the creature was approaching the boat with alarming speed. He and Leland took aim with their shotguns and fired. The gator swerved and dodged and both shots missed. In a flash, the gator, all teeth and jaws, was trying to mount the boat. Buckley took aim again, this time directly between the gator’s eyes, and fired. The gator fell off the side of the boat and slid into the water.

            The scene ended as quickly as it had begun and the gator finally lay dead, floating on the surface of the water. Buckley looped a rope around it’s foot and towed it back to Herlin Hall with the boat in order to skin it and process the meat. Cypress Estates, was now, hopefully, gator free.